Fran Drescher mini-bio: Drescher was born in Flushing, Queens, New York City to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin. Drescher grew up in Queens with her parents, Sylvia and Morty Drescher, and was a studious girl who was quite popular in school. Drescher attended Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens. At age fifteen, she met the man she believed that she would spend much of her life with, Peter Marc Jacobson. In 1978, at age twenty-one, the two married.
Her first break was a bit part in the movie Saturday Night Fever (1977).
In January 1985, robbers ransacked Drescher's Los Angeles apartment and raped her and a friend at gunpoint. It took her many years to overcome this ordeal, and it took her even longer to admit this to the press. She was paraphrased as saying in an interview with Larry King that although it was a very negative experience, she found ways to turn her experience into something positive. In her book Cancer Schmancer, she is quoted to have said, "My whole life has been about changing negatives into positives." She saw her rapist sent to prison.
She continued to play small but memorable roles in movies, until she finally created her own vehicle, The Nanny. She was visiting her friend, model Twiggy, in England and came up with the plotline.